UNPRECEDENTED: While President-Elect Donald J. Trump would be far from the first wealthy president, he has unique conflicts of interest presented by his domestic and international holdings. [CS Monitor]

FAUXPEN: While we support the use of websites, apps and social media to inform and engage the public, they are not a substitute for a press conference, as Sunlight’s Melissa Yeager told CBS Local last week. “To not have press conferences, and to not have reporters to challenge the ideas going into the administration, you know, this is really disadvantageous to the public. We don’t get an idea of what his policies are, and how they might affect the American public.” [CBS]

Trump named top campaign lawyer Don McGahn as his chief White House counsel. McGahn has been a proponent of removing restrictions on money in politics. [Center for Public Integrity]

NATIONAL

As noted in today’s Secrecy Newsletter by Steven Aftergood, “national security lawyer and former CIA officer Mark A. Bradley was named as the next director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), which is responsible for oversight of the national security secrecy system government-wide. He was selected by Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero (ISOO is housed at the National Archives) and his appointment was approved last week by President Obama (the ISOO director reports to the President). Mr. Bradley is an intriguing choice for ISOO director, since he is one of a very small group of individuals who have engaged with government secrecy policy both as an outsider-critic and as an insider-defender.” [FAS]

As Julian Hattem reports, despite heavy demand for public records requested under the Freedom of Information Act at the State Department, the federal agency has not been hiring new staff to handle them, “according to a court filing that was made as part of an open records lawsuit launched by the Republican National Committee (RNC). This year, the State Department has been authorized to hire 25 new full-time staffers to work on processing requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But only one has been hired, Obama administration lawyers disclosed in their filing this week. And only six other postings have been advertised on the government’s official jobs portal, suggesting that 18 of the openings have not even been made public.” When asked to comment, the State Department claimed that “the slowness in hiring new FOIA officials is due to bureaucratic demands and the specialization required of new staffers, who must receive security clearances at the top-secret level.” [The Hill]

The Electronic Information Privacy Center commented on the Department of Homeland Security’s revised Freedom of Information Act regulations, which the reform passed this summer required all federal agencies to update. [EPIC]

If you need a refresher for why freedom of information laws matter to informing the public, make sure to read Mike Morisy’s roundup. [MuckRock]

2016 was a busy year for GovTrack, which has been working to make Congress more understandable and transparent to the world for over a decade. Josh Tauberer broke down the improvements to the site and announced it will keep going into 2017. [GovTrack]

STATE AND LOCAL

Minnesota is one of the five states in the Union where at least one legislative body does not publish votes by its members as machine-readable open government data on the Internet. After this year’s election, that may change. “I would be very supportive of getting into the 21st century,” State Senator Carla Nelson told the Pioneer Press. “I think we should have accountability and transparency…by making sure that legislators’ votes are readily available to the public.” [GovTech]

Kyle Plantz reported that outside spending and donations from outside of the state dominated races in New Hampshire. [NH Journal]

Videos from police dashcams and body cams are ground zero for transparency and accountability in the 21st century. The Associated Press found that in Pennsylvania, the videos are mostly remaining secret.
“A statewide survey of how governments handle requests for public records found that police agencies invoked those laws to deny 10 of 25 requests made by employees of Pennsylvania newspapers. In 10 other instances, they said they didn’t have the tapes, either because they had been erased, handed off to prosecutors or other departments or the recorder was turned off or nonexistent.” [AP]

INTERNATIONAL

What can a public registry of the ownership of private companies tell us? That depends on the quality of open data and who’s looking. Here’s what Global Witness, DataKind UK, OpenCorporates, the Spend Network and OCCRP found when they looked at the United Kingdom’s new website: “almost 3,000 companies listed their beneficial owner as a company with a tax haven address,” “76 beneficial owners share the same name and birthday as someone on the U.S. sanctions list, “and “most beneficial owners are from the UK.”

Australia’s commitment to opening data has been called into question by Henry Sherrell. [Henry Sherrell]

The Public Interest Declassification Board will hold a public meeting to “discuss recommendations for improved transparency and open government for the new Presidential Administration” in DC on Dec. 8. [RSVP]

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